The Elements of Culture 59 however, cultural differences can also contribute to tension and cause clashes among groups within a society and between different societies. The Elements of Culture Cultures consist of both material and nonmaterial elements. Material culture refers to the physical objects produced by people in a particular culture, including tools, clothing, toys, works of art, and housing. Nonmaterial culture refers to the ideas of a culture, including values and beliefs, accumulated knowledge about how to understand and navigate the world, and standards or “norms” about appropriate behavior. Nonmaterial culture exists in the world of thoughts and ideas; by contrast, material culture is physically real—it can be observed or touched. Collectively, the ideas and practices of a culture make up an entire way of life, affecting how people eat, work, love, think, worship, dress, learn, play, and live. Because material objects can have symbolic (nonmaterial) meaning, the material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are often interconnected. For example, at the heart of many religions are sacred texts, such as Judaism’s Torah, Christianity’s Bible, and Islam’s Qur’an (or Koran). These writings relate the central beliefs of each faith, thus comprising an essential part of the faith’s nonmaterial culture. At the same time, the books themselves are often considered sacred as physical objects, to be treated with great respect as a part of the material culture. The books (Bibles, Qur’ans) are physical objects (material culture), but they also have symbolic (nonmaterial) signifi cance. Thus Islamic detainees at the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention facility have alleged that U.S. interrogators exerted psychological pressure on them by desecrating the Qur’an, stepping on it and even putting it in a toilet, actions that are a grave violation of Islamic cultural norms (Lewis 2004). Let’s consider how the various aspects of culture work together by looking at a much less serious topic: the everyday activity of grooming hair. Most people put at least some thought into what their hair looks like. Whether unkempt or coolly styled, our hair often expresses who we are. Hairstyles also refl ect cultural values; we learn what is considered attractive and what meaning different hairstyles convey. We may think we are making purely individual statements when we style our hair, but in fact, as the photographs on page 60 show, we are likely to be infl uenced heavily by the ideas and practices of our culture. Often, we are so familiar with our own culture that we have a hard time recognizing its various elements or their signifi cance. If we take a sociological perspective, however, we can see the often hidden ways that cultural ideas and practices help defi ne our identities and our relationship to various communities. The elements of culture—to which we now turn—are summarized in Table 3.1. What we drink and eat, and how we prepare our food, is a familiar—and often vivid—illustration of how culture works. When we are part of a culture, our way of life seems natural, and we take it as a given; we are like fi sh in water. However, a cultural practice taken for granted by insiders may appear to outside observers as interesting, odd, curious, disturbing, or even threatening. This chapter explores the central role of culture in social life and its pervasive infl uence on who we are as human beings. It considers some of the opportunities and challenges posed by our contemporary world, as people of many different cultures interact with increasing frequency and cultural diversity becomes a fact of daily life. As we gain a better understanding of the meaning of culture, we are able not only to analyze its impact on our own lives but also to prepare for a lifetime of interactions with people from cultures other than our own. Defining Culture Culture is one of sociology’s core concepts. Indeed it is an essential part of the very defi nition of society—a group of people who live together in a specifi c territory and share a culture. Many people associate the word culture with museums and symphonies, a connection that is understandable because one defi nition of the term does involve the “cultivation” of the mind by studying the “best” a society has to offer. In the West, culture in this sense generally refers to such attributes as education and refi nement in the arts and such artifacts as great works of literature and classical music. For sociologists and anthropologists, however, culture has a much broader, more inclusive meaning. Culture is the collection of values, beliefs, knowledge, norms, language, behaviors, and material objects shared by a people and socially transmitted from generation to generation. Sometimes culture is simply referred to as a way of life. Culture must be learned; it is not biologically based. In fact, we can think of culture as all aspects of society that are transmitted socially rather than biologically. That you may be tall is a biological reality. That you use your height to advantage when you play basketball is a result of cultural infl uences. The process through which people learn about their culture is called socialization, a topic we explore in Chapter 6. Culture operates at multiple levels, from everyday actions by individuals (micro level), to the norms that operate within an organization such as a school or business (meso level), to the beliefs and practices associated with very large groups of people, including entire societies (macro level). At each level, the elements of culture infl uence how people live. At any level, culture can serve as a source of both consensus and confl ict in society. Regardless of the size of a particular group, its culture serves as a common ground connecting group members to one another. As we see later in this chapter,
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